A
character is a member of a
defined set of elements that is used for the
control or representation of data. You can usually enter a character with
a single keystroke. The coded representation of a character
is its representation
in digital form. A character, the letter A, for example, differs from
its
coded representation or encoding.
Various coded character
sets (such as ASCII and EBCDIC) use different encodings
for the letter A (decimal
values 65 and 193, respectively). This book uses characters to convey meanings
and not to imply a specific character code, except where otherwise stated.
The exceptions are certain built-in functions that convert between characters
and their representations. The functions C2D, C2X, D2C, X2C, and XRANGE depend
on the character set used.
